Horse_ebooks is perhaps the strangest of all Twitter success stories. The idea was simple: an automated account that sent out random quotes in between actual advertisements for questionable ebooks about horses. Designed specifically to escape Twitter’s spam filters, somewhere along the line Twitter users started recognising the incomplete quotes as almost poetic. The incredibly popular account has managed to attract over 210,000 followers over the last few years. Recent examples of Horse_ebooks tweets include:
AND BURNED BY UNSCRUPULOUS BUSINESSES MORE TIMES
— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) September 21, 2013
face year
— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) September 22, 2013
How many times have you wished you were strong enough to concentrate your mind,
— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) September 22, 2013
Despite a Gawker article from last year revealing that a Russian man named Alexey Kouznetsov was behind the account (as well as a whole host of similar spam profiles and websites), mystery remained about how ‘self-aware’ Horse_ebooks actually was. Could it exist without a guiding human hand? Did Kouznetsov play along with the robot account's ever increasing popularity?
This afternoon, the truth behind Horse_ebooks was finally revealed. The New Yorker published an article by Susan Orlean - of The Orchid Thief and Adaptation fame - revealing that Horse_ebooks is actually an elaborate, two-year-long art project, as was the equally peculiar YouTube ‘Pronunciation Channel’ (a video series reading out popular words and phrases). Artists Jacob Bakkila and Thomas Bender were responsible for the project.
Horse_ebooks wasn't born as an art project, though. As suggested in a quick follow-up report from Gawker, Buzzfeed employee Bakkila procured ownership of the account from Kouznetsov - indeed the account's founder - back in 2011.
Horse_ebooks and Pronunciation Channel both announced the revelation in a typically eccentric manner:
— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) September 24, 2013
(213) 444 0102
— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) September 24, 2013
The tweets coincided with the launch of an art exhibition called Bravospam in New York. Anyone phoning the number has been greeted with a brief Horse_ebooks style comment (read by a human).
It seems as if both Horse_ebooks and Pronunciation Channel will now be retired. They will be succeeded by an ‘interactive’ video project called Bear Stearns Bravo. With that, one of the Internet’s strangest mysteries has just been solved - although many tweeters will miss the insightful and amusing contributions of Twitter’s most popular spam bot.
